Familiar Devils and Old Maps Explain Lack of New U.S. Vision

Concern seems to be mounting about whether the George Bush Administration is ever going to develop “the vision thing.”

During his visit to London in April, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev cheekily took a swipe at the White House for its continued adherence to “old thinking.” West German editor Theo Sommer subsequently groused that the Administration’s vaunted pragmatism masked a lack of imagination. George F. Kennan, author of the containment policy, and congressional Democrats have similarly questioned why Washington policy-makers--and, indirectly, university or think-tank experts they regularly consult--have been so slow responding to changes in Soviet foreign and defense policy.

Last week, even a fictional TV program crudely suggested that some Washington insiders might scheme to undermine detente because it threatens to reduce their policy-making influence. Americans love a good conspiracy, the more illogical the better. Upon reflection, however, policies designed to promote the normalization of U.S.-Soviet relations would make foreign-policy experts, in and out of government, even more indispensable.

There are, in fact, better, more prosaic reasons for the perceived absence of American new thinking.

At the policy-making level, the most basic explanation for lack of sweeping new policy toward the Soviet Union is an outdated chart. The intellectual map used by experts--in think tanks, universities and government--to assess the Soviets is no longer adequate to explain the changes taking place within that superpower.

After seven decades of intransigent ideological opposition to the United States and its capitalist allies, the Kremlin has abandoned a revolutionary script in favor of an accommodating, pragmatic approach to international affairs. Such new thinking has shattered the image experts once formed of the Soviet Union and disrupted the repertoire of ingrained policy responses. Like the larger society they mirror, experts are themselves groping to reconstruct their image of the Soviet Union so they may define a new framework for analysis that will enhance American interests.

Second, changing the way the United States does business with the Soviet Union is a serious matter; the magnitude of the stakes involved in formulating a new approach to Moscow necessarily induces caution among the most assured foreign-policy intellectuals. Most experts remain uncertain whether they are witnessing a major transformation or whether the West is being lulled into a state of complacency that could lead to a more dangerous superpower competition. Parts of the public may be irresistibly smitten by the prospect of U.S.-Soviet amity but Soviet watchers are understandably wary of advocating steps that could weaken U.S. security.

Third, like other corporate structures, government agencies, universities and think tanks suffer from institutional inertia. The inherently conservative nature of large organizations militates against radical departures from prevailing views. Even think tanks are susceptible to group-think. One would be hard-pressed to find many proponents of Soviet reform at the Heritage Foundation, for example, or many anti-Soviet hard-liners at the Brookings Institution.

Yet absence of a dramatic new initiative does not necessarily mean that foreign-affairs experts are mired in a policy vacuum. Incremental change, however glacial, takes place all the time. The proposal to reduce conventional arms in Europe, recently announced in Vienna by Secretary of State James A. Baker III, was the cumulative result of a series of incremental policy changes.

Expertise, however, is fragile--all the more fragile when applied to a Byzantine social and political structure such as exists in the Soviet Union, especially when that structure is changing faster than its effects can be intellectually assimilated. Institutions that stake their reputations on policy that may prove to be wrong or, worse, detrimental to American interests, risk the loss of professional credibility. In the case of many think tanks, loss of credibility could have the most disastrous kind of consequences.

The political milieu that foreign-policy experts confront, in and out of government, has also contributed to the absence of dramatic policy initiatives. Even while some knowledgeable observers such as former ambassador Kennan voice apprehension that the United States may squander a unique opportunity to transform the nature of superpower relations, policy-makers have not yet felt much political pressure to emulate Gorbachev’s new thinking.

Many experts believe there is no urgency to formulate new policies; the process of Soviet reform will continue to be driven by internal politics rather than by external developments. Some Soviet reformers do not disagree. Nikolai A. Shmelev, head of the economics department at Moscow’s Institute for U.S.A. and Canada Studies, recently said as much, noting that in the long run the Soviet Union “was doomed to be successful.”

While the broad spectrum of American opinion has been tantalized by the growing end-of-the-Cold War rhetoric, the public has not yet called upon the Bush Administration to devise fresh policies for a new era in U.S.-Soviet relations. Lest we forget, the American public just elected a President who stood for continuity, not the candidate who promised sweeping change.

Finally, the policy views of the Administration--and of academic or think tank experts from whom it solicits ideas--are inevitably influenced by the broader culture in which foreign policy is shaped. Policy-makers and intellectuals, like the general public, may not want to give up their Soviet devil.

Although Gorbachev and his advisers are attempting to transform the evil empire image, they have found policy-making circles curiously resistant to their efforts. This suggests that the foreign affairs Establishment may prefer to live with the devil they have known for the past 70 years rather than the one they fear may follow.

The superpower competition of the past four decades has preserved order in Europe and thus justified America’s political involvement in the world. Fragmentation of that bipolar order as a result of Soviet new thinking would surely weaken U.S. political dominance in Europe. Moreover, if the anti-Christ were exorcised, and the Soviet Union were to behave as a nation-state rather than as the trustee of a world-revolutionary crusade, subsequent Presidents might find it increasingly difficult to sustain public support for internationalism.

This was, after all, the society that based its political involvement in the world on the Puritan myth of “a city on the hill.” And if the United States were to lessen its political involvement in the world, the role that foreign-policy experts have come to play--whether in ivory towers or government institutions--would be commensurately reduced.